This Year, Everything Changed...
It Used to be easy to figure out what was a sport/utility vehicle: Whether it was as bare-bones rugged as a Jeep or dripping with high-tech luxury like a Range Rover, an SUV boasted the all-wheel drive and the ground clearance needed to take you places roads didn't go. But as the largest group of contenders ever assembled for a Sport/Utility of the Year shootout--22 in all--gathered for evaluation at the Emergency Vehicle Operations Center driver training facility in San Bernardino, California, it became clear the segment has rapidly evolved into something less rigidly defined.
Only three of this year's contenders--the new Jeep Wrangler, the Mercedes-Benz GL, and the Toyota FJ Cruiser--can be rightly regarded as bone-fide off-roaders. All the rest, even GM's truck-tough GMT900s (Escalade, Yukon, Tahoe, Suburban), are clearly biased toward road duty. And some, like Ford's new Edge, Honda's new CR-V, and Suzuki's new XL7, will almost certainly be popular as purely front-drive vehicles in states where snow isn't a problem.
Should we be surprised? No. The reality is most customers find bold styling, a high seating position, and a multifunction interior far more compelling reasons to buy an SUV than an ability to tackle the Rubicon Trail. Few SUVs today deal with anything more challenging than winter snowstorms and the occasional gravel road. This year's SUOTY field easily reflects these realities; today's SUV is a vehicle defined by a whole different set of customer expectations.
Our SUOTY testing this year took this seismic shift into account. Although all the variants we tested featured all-wheel drive, we didn't subject any of the contenders to a hard-core off-road course. Instead, we focused on things like on-road driveability and refinement, interior flexibility and functionality--things that are top of mind for consumers in the typical duty cycle of today's SUV. We didn't ignore off-road ability: All vehicles were broadly rated based on such fundamentals as approach and departure angles, breakover angles, and whether a low-range transmission was available. But rock-crawling wouldn't decide the winner this year.
The judging began with a tech check and three days of track-testing at California Speedway: acceleration and braking, the 600-foot slalom, and our unique Motor Trend figure-eight test. The track-testing gave the eight judges solid baseline data to work with as the back-to-back driving evaluations got underway in scorching 106-degree heat at the 78-acre EVOC facility.
With so many vehicles in the field, the EVOC session was used to whittle the group down to a solid 10 contenders for the crown. Those vehicles the judges felt missed the mark in terms of the SUOTY criteria--superiority, significance, and value--were to be left behind once the team moved to a 25-mile loop near Thousand Oaks, where each judge would drive each vehicle over the same roads in real-world conditions. Deciding which vehicles to cut provoked lively discussions: Which of the impressively refined and well-finished GMT900s should go through? If the Edge made the cut, what about the more expensive Lincoln MKX? Did the Mitsubishi Outlander and Suzuki XL7 really stand a chance with the Hyundai Santa Fe in the top 10?
In the end, it all comes down to trusting the process. SUOTY is about spending the time to test, to analyze, to evaluate, and to think about how each vehicle rates against the criteria. It's a long and expensive exercise, which is why other magazines don't do it. But it works. Our winner this year is both accomplished and worthy. Again.